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That point was addressed in the article: > And yet again, while it’s tempting to see, promote or editorialize an opportunity to convert all the vacant office s
by trabant00 4y ago
That point was addressed in the article:
> And yet again, while it’s tempting to see, promote or editorialize an opportunity to convert all the vacant office space in San Francisco into housing, the conversion of existing office space to residential use still makes absolutely no economic sense for the vast majority of San Francisco buildings, due to the relative value of each use and the costs of conversion.
- ltbarcly3 4y agoThen they are permanently going to be abandoned.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoNot likely. You won't have a permanently abandoned building in a city like that. Someone buys it or it comes down.
- maerF0x0 4y agoExactly. the owners go bankrupt. It's auctioned for a present price that looks like a bond of it's future cashflows. This is why rent doesn't always track purchase prices. People who bought a long time ago, or are picking up distressed assets have a lower capital base than those who bought recently or at peak prices. Because they have a lower capital base they only need to compete with, on a risk adjusted basis, with other recurring revenue investments (like bonds). Now, because bond rates have sky rocketed recently, that means the value of the buildings has plummeted (remember risk adjusting). If a building value has plummeted, and it's vacant, the owner has a good chance, potentially an incentive to just walk away from it.
- orangepurple 4y agoThere are abandoned buildings in Manhattan that have been sitting untouched since the early 80s
- justahuman74 4y agoIs it not worth it to demolish it and build apartments?
- orangepurple 4y agoMaybe it gives you a taste of the extreme level of bureaucracy in NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjd1WNhGliY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjd1WNhGliY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=965BLLWv8h8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=965BLLWv8h8
- Octoth0rpe 4y ago> due to the relative value of each use I suspect that relative value may shift significantly once building owners accept that office workers _really really_ aren't coming back.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mathverse 4y agoWorkers DONT WANT to come back. That's the reality. Check all the spreadsheets of recently laid off workers from the big tech. Vast majority of them would prefer remote/hybrid models. However I expect companies will try to push people to go back to the cubicle.
- fasteddie 4y agoRegardless of relative value, in most cases it is cheaper to just demolish and rebuild office space than gut + renovate. SROs/boarding house cases make a little more economic sense for these conversions but are more unpopular uses.
- maerF0x0 4y agoReally? Even tall towers? Seems shocking and I'd appreciate a source.
- packetlost 4y agoI mean, think about the layout of the average office space: hundreds of small rooms with big open spaces in the center and large, common bathrooms. The plumbing is the biggest problem to fix, because all of it is buried in walls and extremely difficult to retrofit for individual kitchen + bathrooms space.
- maerF0x0 4y agoI guess I'm no civil engineer/architect but I would have thought you could simply tear down all the interior bits and be left with the concrete and steel and just rebuild the layout and attach the plumbing/electrical to the main lines/conduits for those purposes? But yeah maybe the spec of an office floor of people shitting and cooking is a lot different than a floor of residential homes?